The Many Benefits of Vitamin C Supplementation

Boosts the immune system, helps the body detoxify, improves the gut microbiome, supports liver function, binds to heavy metals, reduces histamine levels, and it's one of the cheapest supplements.

I was skeptical of high doses of vitamin C because I always have to understand the science inside and out before I will jump on a bandwagon. My default is to assume something isn’t necessary until I find compelling evidence it is.

Recently, I’ve been doing a bit of research about vitamin C and am now persuaded that high doses can be helpful in certain situations.

However, I have been supplementing with a small amount vitamin C for several years. I and my family have been taking 400 mg of whole-food vitamin C. I chose this form since it contains bioflavonoids and co-factors that aid in assimilation and absorption. However, this form is cost-prohibitive if one wants to take the high doses that I now believe could be helpful.

I was skeptical about taking pure ascorbic acid but a few facts have caused me to change my mind. The first is that I found out that nearly all mammals, with only a few exceptions, produce their own ascorbic acid from glucose molecules in their liver via an enzymatic process.

When you look at the structure of glucose and vitamin C molecules, it makes sense that most mammals could make their own C.

Here’s the chemical formula of a glucose molecule: C₆H₁₂O₆

And here’s the chemical formula of a vitamin C molecule: C₆H₈O₆

They differ by only 4 hydrogen atoms.

A goat weighing 150 lbs makes on average around 13 grams of vitamin C per day—that’s 13,000 mg. To put that into context, I’ve been taking only 400 mg or less than half of a gram. A goat’s body makes 32 times that much daily. It makes even more when needed during times of infection or stress.

One of the reasons I used to be skeptical of supplementation was from reading Weston Price’s account of the incredible health he found among isolated people groups eating traditional diets. These people had no access to supplements yet had perfect health. But it didn’t take me long to realize that if we don’t have access to the vitamin and mineral-rich ancestral diet that they did, we may need some supplementation to compensate for the lack of nutrients.

And it’s not even necessarily the case that those people groups had super high doses of vitamin C in their diets. The Inuit in Alaska almost certainly didn’t. However, our modern conditions may require more vitamin C.

Here’s the deal: if we’re constantly exposed to toxins, extra vitamin C may be necessary to remain as healthy as possible in our modern toxic environment.

There’s a lot of hand-wringing that goes on in health circles about talk of EMFs, heavy metals, pesticides, glyphosate, microplastics, etc. And for good reason—the post-industrial world we find ourselves in has its biological challenges as seen in the enormous spike in chronic diseases such as autism, autoimmune diseases, and allergies. I’ve done my fair share of hand-wringing for sure.

But I’m always drawn to solutions instead of just doom and gloom. And that’s why the vitamin C research piqued my interest. Furthermore, it’s one of the least expensive supplements one can take. I’m always on the lookout for health solutions that the common person can afford.

So here’s the working hypothesis for this post: a toxic world greatly raises a person’s need for substances that help alleviate the toxic burden, and vitamin C is an inexpensive way to help the body clear toxins.

Here is some of the research I’ve found on ways that vitamin C benefits the body.

1. Vitamin C Greatly Boosts the Immune System

This research really got the nerd in me pumped. Vitamin C is used by immune cells to kill pathogens. Is that cool or what? 🤓

The journal Nutrients published a study titled Vitamin C and Immune Function that says:

Vitamin C accumulates in phagocytic cells, such as neutrophils, and can enhance chemotaxis [chemical-induced movement], phagocytosis [engulfing], generation of reactive oxygen species, and ultimately microbial killing. It is also needed for apoptosis and clearance of the spent neutrophils from sites of infection by macrophages, thereby decreasing necrosis/NETosis and potential tissue damage.

That was filled with some big words so allow me to translate. A phagocytic cell acts sort of like a blob of slime that completely envelopes a pathogen.

In order to be effective killers, these blob cells horde vitamin C at a rate of 50 to 100 times what is found in the blood. They are vitamin C hogs!

Why do the cells stockpile ascorbic acid inside themselves? Because they use the vitamin C to then neutralize the pathogens once they’re enveloped inside by generating reactive oxygen species that dissolve the buggers.

It’s like Pac-Man but in 3D. So cool.

Your vitamin C-equipped phagocytes be like:

But this means that in times of illness, the body may benefit from enormous amounts of vitamin C—just like the goat whose body produces huge amounts. This is especially true if your body is bombarded with other unnatural toxins that are taxing its supply.

Another study titled Vitamin C Promotes Maturation of T-Cells concludes:

Our results provide strong experimental evidence supporting a role for ascorbic acid in T-cell maturation as well as insight into the mechanism of ascorbate-mediated enhancement of immune function.

2. Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant

First, let’s review what an oxidant is. An oxidant, also called a free radical, is a molecule that is missing an electron. This makes it volatile such that it reacts with your tissue by stealing an electron causing damage to DNA, proteins, and lipids. This contributes to aging and diseases like cancer, diabetes, and neurodegenerative disorders.

An antioxidant, such as vitamin C, neutralizes this oxidant, or free radical, by donating an electron ensuring your own tissue will not be damaged.

For those who prefer science-speak, here is what the science journal Nutrients says here:

Vitamin C is an essential micronutrient for humans, with pleiotropic [versatile] functions related to its ability to donate electrons. It is a potent antioxidant and a cofactor for a family of biosynthetic and gene regulatory enzymes.

3. Vitamin C Supplementation Improves Gut microbiota

Who knew, right? But here it is, straight from the journal Frontiers in Nutrition from this study:

Our research also found that taking 250 mg/day and 1,000 mg/day of VC [vitamin C] daily for 12 weeks can improve the intestinal microbiota of patients with NAFLD [non alcoholic fatty liver disease] by increasing the diversity of intestinal microbiota and the relative proportion of beneficial bacteria. Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes are the dominant “good” bacteria and “bad” bacteria, respectively. In the human intestinal tract, a person with NAFLD showed a higher Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes (F/B) ratio than a healthy population (51, 52).

In the microbiome world, increasing diversity and the ratio of good bacteria to bad are the keys to gut health. I had no idea that vitamin C has an influence!

4. Vitamin C Supports the Liver’s Ability to Detox

You’ve probably heard it said that your liver is the soccer mom of the body, meaning, it plays numerous irreplaceable roles. One of those is to detox the body by neutralizing harmful substances. Vitamin C allows the liver to detoxify the body more efficiently by aiding in the production of enzymes that break down toxins.

When one develops fatty liver disease, the liver’s ability to detoxify becomes compromised. This study titled Effects of Oral Vitamin C Supplementation on Liver Health and Associated Parameters in Patients With Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: A Randomized Clinical Trial, found that

A total of 12 weeks of VC [vitamin C] supplementation, especially 1,000 mg/day, improved liver health and glucose metabolism in patients with NAFLD [non alcoholic fatty liver disease].

It is estimated that one in four American has fatty liver disease so a lot of people can benefit from vitamin C to help with that. Once again, we see that the modern climate has created diseases that physicians 50 years ago never saw except in alcoholics. Perhaps people didn’t used to need vitamin C supplements because they didn’t have so many chronic health problems. Now we do.

5. Helps Remove Heavy Metals

Heavy metals like lead, cadmium, and mercury are a major cause of chronic and acute illness. A study titled Dietary Strategies for the Treatment of Cadmium and Lead Toxicity says:

Apart from its well-established antioxidant properties, vitamin C has been reported to act as a chelating agent of Pb [lead], with a similar potency to that of EDTA [58]. Probably due to this chelating capacity, a decrease of blood Pb levels from 1.8 ± 0.05 μmol/L to 0.4 ± 0.05 μmol/L (p ≤ 0.01) was observed in a study of 75 adult smokers receiving 1 g vitamin C daily for one week [59].

6. Vitamin C Reduces Histamine Levels

Many people I work with struggle with histamine intolerance. Some histamine is necessary in the body and makes your brain alert. But the problem comes when histamine builds up beyond your body’s ability to break it down.

There is a kind of immune cell called a mast cell that releases histamine when triggered. Many people have a problem called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) where their mast cells are constantly releasing histamine. This is becoming more common as many people’s bodies are reacting to the COVID spike protein either from the vaccine or from a COVID infection.

The good news is that vitamin C can help calm down this tragic histamine cycle.

Consider what this study says, titled The effects of vitamin C on respiratory, allergic and immunological diseases: an experimental and clinical-based review:

In a meta-analysis including 3 controlled clinical trials (involving 79 children and adults), the efficacy of AA [ascorbic acid] as single or multiple oral doses for different lengths of time (1 g/day for 14 weeks, 2 g/day at two time points, and 5 g/day for 2 weeks), significant reduction of the incidence and severity of common cold, moderate and severe asthma and airway responsiveness to histamine were shown (Hemilä 2013).

This abstract is long but well worth reading. It’s from a study titled Intravenous infusion of ascorbic acid decreases serum histamine concentrations in patients with allergic and non-allergic diseases:

Histamine plays an important role in the development of symptoms in allergic, infectious, neoplastic and other diseases. Empirical findings have suggested beneficial effects of ascorbic acid supplementation in those diseases, and these effects are assumed to be related to a possible decrease in systemic histamine concentration. In the present study, we systematically investigated for the first time the effect of 7.5 g of intravenously administered ascorbic acid on serum histamine levels (as detected by ELISA) in 89 patients (19 with allergic and 70 with infectious diseases). When all patients were grouped together, there was a significant decline in histamine concentration from 0.83 to 0.57 ng/ml×m2 body surface area (BSA, p<0.0001). The decrease in serum histamine concentration in patients with allergic diseases (1.36 to 0.69 ng/ml×m2 BSA, p=0.0007) was greater than that in patients with infectious diseases (0.73 to 0.56 ng/ml×m2 BSA, p=0.01). Furthermore, the decline in histamine concentration after ascorbic acid administration was positively correlated with the basal, i.e. pre-therapeutic, histamine concentration. Intravenous infusion of ascorbic acid clearly reduced histamine concentrations in serum, and may represent a therapeutic option in patients presenting with symptoms and diseases associated with pathologically increased histamine concentration.

Although the study focused on intravenous ascorbic acid, a similar effect can happen from oral supplementation.

How Much Vitamin C Should I Take?